Google Doodle celebrates 104th birth anniversary of India's first woman photojournalist, Homai Vyarawalla

While India was transitioning from being a colony of the British Raj to becoming world’s largest democracy, there was one person who was persistently busy documenting all the important events, milestones, heroes and villains of that era. That was Homai Vyarawalla, the country’s first woman photojournalist, who later became an inspiration to a lot of women who chose the high-demanding field of journalism. Hence **Google dedicated its Doodle** to this fantastic woman as she would have been 104-years old, had she been alive today. [caption id=“attachment_4250003” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Homai Vyarawalla[/caption] Born in a Parsi family on 9 December, 1913 in Navsari, Gujarat, Vyarawalla and her family moved to Mumbai as she wanted to pursue a diploma course in St. Xavier’s College. She went on to further study at the famous JJ School of Art in Mumbai. In fact, it was there when she met Maneckshaw Vyarawalla, a photographer who later also became her husband. She breathed her last on 15 January, 2012 in Vadodara, Gujarat. Vyarawalla was a known face — clad in a sari and hopping from one city to the other — and a force to reckon with. She would take up assignments that needed a lot of physical exertion; high accuracy to get that perfect shot and then deliver them on time — hence, giving the world a glimpse of India’s most significant events. Vyarawalla always believed that it is the classical intersection of composition, angle and timing that forms a good photograph.“There are 15 people taking a photograph at the same time; each has his own style. But there’s only one who gets the right moment and the right angle,” she said in an interview to The Hindu. Some of her most iconic pictures include the first Flag hoisting at the Red Fort on 15 August, 1947 (the first Independence Day), the departure of Lord Mountbatten from India, the arrival of young Dalai Lama as he crossed the Chinese borders and stepped onto India in 1959. She has also documented pictures of funerals of India’s greatest leaders: Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri to name a few.